“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Have things improved since I wrote my last essay a year ago for this blog? Have we miraculously transformed our entire energy system into one that does not poison and degrade the natural world? Have we slowed the onslaught of plastic pollution choking the planet’s rivers, lakes, and oceans? Have we done anything meaningful to halt the deterioration of the planet’s biodiversity toward mass extinction? Has this global, hi-tech civilization done anything significant to avert its own demise? Despite a constant flow of warnings from the scientific community and even a letter signed by more than 20,000 scientists, the simple answer is no. We have failed to address the complexity of our rising population and a degrading environment. Yes, we are self-conscious and thus able to recognize the fact that we are destroying the only home we have, but will the end result differ much from a population overshoot of bacteria in a Petri dish? Dependent on a continuous stream of finite resources imported from across the globe, modern megacities contain the seeds of their own destruction and that of all other life forms upon which humanity depends for its survival. The exponential growth of modern civilization ensures that one of the next doubling times will produce an absolute increase in overshoot that tips the world into unavoidable collapse. Enough damage may well have already been done; we’re just waiting for inertia to catch up to the impacts.

While climate models incorporate important climate processes that can be well quantified, they do not include all of the processes that can contribute to feedbacks (Ch. 2), compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes. For this reason, future changes outside the range projected by climate models cannot be ruled out (very high confidence). Moreover, the systematic tendency of climate models to underestimate temperature change during warm paleoclimates suggests that climate models are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of long-term future change (medium confidence). (Ch. 15)

In a new ominous research finding, the evil twin of climate change(ocean acidification) is threatening the base of the marine food chain by disrupting the production of phytoplankton. This is yet another positive feedback loop increasing the rate of global warming. Climate feedback loops and ice sheet modeling are two weak areas of climate science, which means many unpleasant surprises. This is why researchers are constantly astonished. Adaptation is not a luxury most organisms have at the present rates of change. Techno-fixes are but a pipe dream.

A study published last year pulls no punches by describing the mass extermination of billions of animals in recent decades as a “biological annihilation.” Extinction risks for many species are vastly underestimated. Insects, the base of the terrestrial food chain, are faring no better. With the steep loss of invertebrates, multiple studies indicate the world is “on course for an ecological Armageddon”. Trees are dying at an unprecedented rate from extreme weather events, portending profound effects to Earth’s carbon cycle. Coral bleaching events are now happening four times more frequently than a few decades ago. Dr Charlie Veron, a renowned scientist specializing in corals and reefs, said this last year:

“Half of all coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef died over the past two years due to coral bleaching,’’ Dr Veron said.

“It’s going to be a horrible world. Young people now are going to curse the present generation for what we’ve done. We’ll have left them a planet in dire straits.’’

“Between a quarter and a third of all marine species have part of their life cycle in a coral reef. Taking away the reefs precipitates ecological collapse of the oceans. It’s happened twice in the past due to volcanoes releasing carbon dioxide and lava flows, but that was nothing like the amount of carbon dioxide being released now.’’

Climate change is just one of many factors in mankind’s planetary overshoot. We even have a day designated in recognition of our oversized ecological footprint which comes earlier every year, with nary a mention of it in official economic reports. As Herman Daly has explained, the global economic system treats the earth as a business in liquidation. The destruction of the natural world is enshrined in our positive economic indicators, i.e. rising GDP. And if need be, those numbers will be massaged to meet expectations. On a subconscious level, the growth imperative applies to all species including humans:

Humans share two behavioral traits with all other species that are critically important to (un)sustainability. Numerous experiments show that unless or until constrained by negative feedback (e.g., disease, starvation, self-pollution) the populations of all species:

• Expand to occupy all accessible habitats.

• Use all available resources.

Like mindless bacteria bent on their own success, humans are victims of their own DNA and ingenuity. Any civilization that develops energy harvesting technologies allowing for rapid population growth will generate entropy which will in turn almost certainly have strong feedback effects on the planet’s habitability. Our exponentially growing economy is on a collision course with an immovable ecosphere.

The end of the world is coming for the naked ape, not by a cabal of bankers or any sort of cockamamie conspiracy tale like chemtrails, but by us –the entire human race– and the economic system we have developed. We’ve become hostages to the complex structures and ever more intricate specialization of an economic system designed to exploit diminishing resources. Pollution and waste are of little concern for capitalism until they become a significant drain on overall profitability and new frontiers to exploit are exhausted. When profitability on a global scale is finally threatened by climate change, it will be far too late. The response will be militarized and authoritarian.

On a more insidious note, capitalism is driven by a deep instinctive drive to accumulate which was a very survival-positive compulsion during our several million years of evolving into Homo sapiens to overcome dry periods and other threats. Capitalism hits on this genetic proclivity, and when we get a clear opportunity to grab a big time accumulation, get rich and all, social good be damned. Our big and powerful cerebral cortex is hard-pressed to find a cure.

“I am rather pessimistic. The maladaptive assumptions of prevailing cultures are deeply ingrained. The notion that economic growth must take precedence over all other considerations and general ignorance of biological and ecological realities do not augur well for the future.” ~ Professor Stephen Boyden, human ecologist

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond found that a common factor was the myopic and self-serving decision-making of elites who believed they could insulate themselves from the consequences of societal disasters. As the elites reaped the rewards, the resulting damage to everyone else built up over time until calamity struck. The grim reality is that history has proven such cycles of extreme wealth inequality have only been broken by catastrophes –plagues, revolutions, massive wars, and collapsed states. The U.S. has now reached a degree of wealth disparity unequaled in history:

Overall, the highest-ever historical Gini the researchers found was that of the ancient Old World (think Patrician Rome), which got a score of .59. While the degrees of inequality experienced by historical societies are quite high, the researchers note, they’re nowhere near as high as the Gini scores we’re seeing now…”it is safe to say that the degree of wealth inequality experienced by many households today is considerably higher than has been the norm over the last ten millennia,” the researchers write in their paper.

The crisis of civilization is planet-wide this time. We’ve turned a utopian world of plenty into a dystopian world of fascist-leaning governments, industrial disasters, collapsing ecosystems, and technological addiction. We have a Commander in Chief who tweets bizarre debunked conspiracies at 3 am, gets his intel briefings from right-wing TV shows, dismantles any remaining hindrances to unbridled capitalism, and doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate. Public discourse has been dumbed down to the level of Fox news talking points and tribal groupthink. Those who can discern actual ‘fake news’ from scientific fact are left to watch in horror as mainstream scientific projections continue to prove overly optimistic. Not only are regulations being cut left and right, they are not being enforced. Government science advisors are being purged and replaced with mouthpieces for industrial polluters. In fact, this administration is actively working to delegitimize and destroy government institutions. A sizable population of low information voters supports such actions, but it’s only to their own detriment. Although both major parties are under the sway of corporate power, Trump and company represent an exceptionally predatory class of people. The Union of Concerned Scientists is monitoring the current administration’s war on science and public health; their latest report is here:

The administration’s one-year record shows an unprecedented level of stalled and disbanded scientific advisory committees, cancelled meetings, and dismissed experts. The consequences for the health and safety of millions of Americans could be profound.

We live in an age of unparalleled technological advancement, while at the same time we turn a blind eye to the disintegrating natural world that gave birth to us, having forgotten that our destiny lies in our relationship with the earth. Like Icarus who, in his exuberance, ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun, modern man with his technology has ascended to great heights without heeding sound advice.

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” ~ Carl Sagan

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About xraymike79

I’m a social critic, political/cultural commentator and artist. The modern industrial world is sleepwalking towards the cliff of economic and ecological ruin. Most are oblivious to the paradigm shift that is occurring, but some are starting to awaken to the false stories our culture has told itself. My objective is to highlight important news stories and essays to find the hidden truth behind what Joe Bageant called the American Hologram.
www.collapseofindustrialcivilization.com

Excellent depiction of our human predicament, with a caveat that “We” did not “choose” this. –
Did the bacteria in the petri dish make a “choice,” saying to one another, this is what we want, this is how we are going to go? No, this is evolution’s imposition upon us, upon the bacteria, upon the reindeer on st. Mathew’s Island, on all natural scenarios when a dominant species exploits its resources until it destroys its bases for life.
We “arrange” practically nothing, our individual human agency is practically nil. Who are we to think we control our industrialized social world with our good thoughts and our good recycling and save-the-polar-bear bake sales?
Thanks for setting this down, in any case.

In my view, this is a half-truth, not that that will make any difference. All the bacteria that have taken-over in the petri-dish are the same. Not all humans are the same. There are those morally bankrupt and/or willfully blind elites; there are those who cling to some hope or other and slog ahead despite a fraught existence; there are those who happily pursue the basest of objectives like procreation (the bacteria) and finally there are those who rage in their impotence against the dying of the world.

Not all humans are the same, correct. Not all bacteria, however, are the same, either. Not all particles of CO2 are the same, by the same measure. But they all operate under collective systems of energy and entropy, if I’ve got the science right.
Good luck pursuing a universal sorting system of blame/responsibility, post facto moral evaluation award in any of these environments, for any of these species. The universe seems to not have that apparent moral streak, however.

Spot-on, as ever, Mike. However things may be even grimmer than they seem from an American perspective (and that is pretty grim!). See http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319412696 (Copy available if you email me).
Keep up the fury.

But I thought the “noble savage” negroes are going to save us all by building nuclear fusion reactors, spaceships to Mars, and magical cities called Wakanda which are noble, progressive, functional, and, best of all, free of the hated whitey?

Now, you know I’m just teasing, I’m just poking you guys. Of course I know the score, I know how screwed all of us are. But I’m also smart enough to know the negroes aren’t magical. They will just continue being what they are.

Dolph, what’s your fucking problem with constantly bringing up “negroes” when neither the article or the comments are on that subject? That’s called having a hang up.

What happened dolph? Did a black guy punch you out at school? Did the black players on the football team fuck your sister & girl friend?

Always off topic and bringing up Negroes this & Negroes that. OK you don’t like them. Get a bumper sticker and tell the entire world for all I care or better yet, deal with your American personal problem by yourself for fuck sake. Grow up old man.

I think Dolph is annoyed by those who claim that “oppressed” people are morally above white & Asian nature-destroyers just because they lacked the technology to destroy it first. The race or clan with the best technology (e.g. guns) tends to prevail in conflicts. For example, computers would never have been invented in Africa; don’t kid yourselves. It’s just a different mindset there, whether you call it I.Q. or not.

Movies like “Black Panther” portray blacks as victims of racism & oppression who merely need their superior abilities unleashed. It’s a bogus narrative, as you can easily observe in predominantly black neighborhoods and nations. People who won’t even fix a broken taillight or trim weeds aren’t going to give us a techno-utopia. The 1994 Rwandan genocide and ongoing bloodbaths in Africa are good lessons for the naive. Blacks tend to self-govern with chronic tension, like street gangs, which isn’t inherently destructive to nature until technology and sheer numbers (enabled by medicine & food-aid) amplify their attitudes.

Africa has a huge overpopulation problem that’s wiping out iconic wildlife, but liberals claim they just need endless assistance so “someday” social justice will be attained. Environmentalism and social justice are at odds due to overpopulation apologists. Birth control can’t wait until someday! Aid groups have been claiming that for decades and can’t admit that Africa is being ruined by continental welfare experiments. They shouldn’t be compelled to strive for western standards of living they can’t maintain. Grim as it is, starvation keeps people aware of limits and nature has “used” it for eons.

The main way black culture could help the planet is to deescalate modern technology and revert to simpler living that worked for centuries before fossil fuels leveraged human impact. Whites and Asians have a tendency to always complicate things and tinker too much (industrial wind power is a prime example of engineering insanity). Ideally humans would live as simply as possible but keep select technologies around, somehow preventing them from blooming out of control again. As Alan Watts said: “In some way or other, the human race has to learn how to leave the world alone.”

Along that line of thinking, we need another person like T.K. who doesn’t evilly bomb people to get attention. It will take clever approaches, like a series of cryptic anti-growth billboards across America to get people thinking differently. Cars stuck in traffic would make an ideal audience. Random blog rants are inadequate because they’re mainly echo-chambers, but they could get noticed more with unique offline tactics.

In fact, most of Africa’s problems can be tied back to Western colonialism which has exploited that nation’s resources for centuries, including human resources via the slave trade. If you look at any native community whose way of life has been irrevocably changed by Western expansion, you’ll find high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, and social disintegration.

I can’t argue that Western influence didn’t corrupt Africa in many ways, but that’s actually a separate issue (a diversion) from the inherent inability of most blacks to match white and Asian technical achievements.

I think “primitive” societies are far more sustainable, so it’s a complex topic.

You said: “They shouldn’t be compelled to strive for western standards of living they can’t maintain.”

That’s the problem for everyone. The West could never have maintained their way of life either, without exploiting and destroying the rest of the planet. Nevertheless, humans will exploit their environment to the fullest possible extent that their technology allows. That’s where intelligence without sapience has produced deadly results. A shaman from an indigenous culture in South America called the developed world “children with destructive toys.” Who can argue that we have not left behind a wake of Death? Ultimately, all that phantom wealth will be clawed back from us by a destabilized world.

Mike, it’s a relief to read someone discussing this loud and clear.
I had visions as a child and saw many things that have come to pass.
That is why l had no children, became a caregiver with hospice training,
became a garden designer studying permaculture, bout a hundred years
too late. Yeah to get prepared. I’ ve seen this train a coming from a long way
off and few wanted to talk about it. So thanks for the company.
Going to get another bottle of that marvelous black currant wine and toast you.

I was at the first Earth Day teach-in while in 10th grade in 1970. I have no children. The visions I pictured happening around 2050 are here now! I did listen to the presentations and my biology classes talked of ecology, population, toxic waste, global warming, etc. My biology II class in 12th grade did an overnight field trip to Chaco Canyon, an ancient civilization that collapsed after the trees were gone, and then we visited the Four Corners Power Station. Coal would be mined from the Navajo coal fields and come in on trains and be dumped a car at a time to huge crushers to be burned and 950 thousand volt lines sent power to LA and Phoenix. Needless to say my eyes were opened and I’ve been aware of ecological degradation ever since high school.(Graduated 1972) So none of this is new. It is accelerating at an alarming rate yet the leaders ignore the warnings or worse deny them altogether. Since I’ve left no children I shouldn’t care, but I cry watching stupid humanity murder Earth and all her children. I know I’m part of the same murderous regime but do my best to conserve resources. No car, small studio apartment, public transportation, very efficient PC and TV, microwave cooking, etc. If regular folks won’t park their cars a day a week, stop eating meat, stop flying and rid the world of all militaries there’s no long term future for anyone. Dark times are indeed ahead and most don’t realize how quickly it can turn bad and collapse this destructive industrial civilization based on capitalism. This must end first.

Same here, no kids, but I feel guilty I did a copout from sixties hippie to business school failure (draft dodger). Now it is impossible trying to convince the younger ones they are on the wrong path. All I can do is watch the planet burn.

Hartwoodgardens caught my eye with his comments. All we can do at this point is prepare and I am trying to streamline my “prepare” efforts, through growing food / permaculture. I’m getting ready to retire in the next year or so, (timing is important) but need to optimize my available resources. My priority goal is not to survive myself, that would be insane, I want to create a workable food production design on my property that can be adapted for others to be able to live comfortably. I know there are lots of web sites, blogs and other resources, but I just need to get down and “dig in” when I retire from my day job.
Quick help needed by all.

Re. vegetarian/veganism: Industrial factory farming is an abomination from many angles, but if the world’s population turned vegan overnight,it wouldn’t alter our trajectory greatly. We are too deeply into overshoot.

“There are plans for substantial further growth and there just isn’t the water to support that,” says climate researcher Jonathan Overpeck, who co-authored a 2017 report that linked declining flows in the Colorado river to climate change. “The Phoenix metro area is on the cusp of being dangerously overextended. It’s the urban bullseye for global warming in north America.”…

…And yet despite the federal Bureau of Reclamation reporting in 2012 that droughts of five or more years would happen every decade over the next 50 years, greater Phoenix has not declared any water restrictions. Nor has the state government decided its official drought contingency proposal.

Not too far in the future, Phoenix will have the climate of Death Valley, where the average summer day is 116 degrees F. and afternoons hotter than 120 are frequent. And it’s the only place I’ve been where there is no vegetation because of extreme heat and dryness. Two million people in a place like that? I think not.

Thank you Mike. Succinct. Grateful to realize you still exist. i have not given up yet, and won’t, but all my senses, working as one sense, informs me that it’s not looking good at all. With that, i leave you with the opening of the operarth (an uncompromising operatic form i’ve devised) that has been making the inbrednet rounds: ‘i Cannot Stop Crying’ (7/15/15):

“The denialism is so deeply ingrained they do not even see, let alone feel, the exiting of all the beautiful Lifeforms, for no longer do they sense any of the tragic loss, or dare to, their lives so estranged from the World that gives them their only breaths.

As the denialism continues, unabated, without a hint of mercy whatsoever, the daily carnage and evisceration without even a hidden tear. Meanwhile, i cannot stop crying as another tree dies in silence before its time, a Monarch never again appears, another elephant becomes a trinket.

Yet i still gaze in awe at the clouds floating by, more than ever before, until they too are no more, though i will have chosen not to witness their disappearance, for i will have chosen not to exist without them. i cannot stop crying.”

When viewed on a grand scale I see no difference in a bacteria using of food in a Petri dish or humans stripping their resources and using over a hundred million years of carbon reserves to power industrialism. Yet humans think they are ‘smart’. They act as any other species competing for resources and edging out less powerful competitors. The means are there to change all of this but the enlightenment, I believe, will be far too late to matter much. That’s the trouble with psychopaths leading the demise of mankind. I believe they’ve been doing it since before recorded history. Sad.

I really wish that times were better, I do. However things have deteriorated since I was in school in the’70’s. X-Ray Mike79 does know what he’s talking about and it’s not good news for Earth and her children, including people. I’ve seen nothing good since I restarted my exploration on the Climate Debate, there isn’t. All I’ve read since ’14 are bad and worse news. I believe things will collapse and soon, there’s no getting around it. It’s far too late to affect reasonable change now. Time to let Earth and her nature take its course.

Hello Mike,
it’s been far too long since we’ve spoken.
I’ve recreated your article with a link back to here at : -https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum/113859/evolutionary-dead-ends-mike-longenecker-website-collapse-industrial-civilization
I hope this hasn’t offended you, but I felt your article deserved as much airplay as it deserves.

Good essay of course. But, contrary to received wisdom, we don’t live in an age of unprecedented technological advancement. That was decades ago. Now, it is pulling demand forward through debt and using gobs of energy for a few new gadgets. Even if one assumes the planet is not being destroyed, it is eating its seed corn.

“Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation over the edge: billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people.”

“It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems,” he says. “As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell’.”

Zickster
Most forcasters are correct, yet they are also incorrect. There will be a disastrous collapse of the economy, in fact it is already underway, but because they exclude the ecological – environmental collapse happening now as well is not to see the worship of mammon and usurpation of Authority infecting the human soul. Should the Arctic experience a blue ocean event this year… acceleration of profound disasters will quickly manifest……mammon , Idolatry and any of it’s forms will have no value anymore. This is the real meaning of the Apocalypse. Spiritual Truth and it’s Value on the other hand will be sought as Recognition of real escape from worldly eminence that cannot be bargained for, nor does it seek recompense. This is why the Elite whom worship Ego self look for off world or underground refuge as they see what’s ahead and seek to escape the Final Vision. Truth is already at hand…..but it’s Recognition by the mind of the son of man will not be made manifest until the Truth seeker awakens to the Christ within and the presence of Love everywhere. Who would not welcome what the Ego conscious universe could never give or achieve. What has all Value and what has no value at all will be in clear view at last.
.
Your loving brother

the forces driving our eminent collapse are so fundamental and inherently endemic to our global neoliberal capitalist system that any hope of averting horrendous catastrophes and our probable near term extinction is indeed a pipe-dream.

quoting Macauley Berg:

“Growth is one of the central pillars of capitalism. The logic of capitalism is such that in
order for per capita consumption and standard of living to increase (with an increasing
population) then economic growth is necessary. But there are limits to growth and “greengrowth” denies these limits using win-win rhetoric wherein we can affirm our over-consumptive lifestyles as well as champion a concern for the natural world. A most insidious form of cognitive dissonance, this position ignores several fundamental considerations relevant to energy, production, and long-term sustainability.”

“rampant neoliberal mainstream economics ease us into a state of alienation where real, effective reform escapes us”

Macauley Berg

“the current stage of history can be characterized as structured by forces that
systematically degrade and finally exceed the buffering capacity of nature with respect to human production thereby setting into motion an unpredictable yet interacting and expanding set of ecosystemic breakdowns.”

https://www.terrypatten.com/a-new-republic-of-the-heart/ New Republic of the Heart addresses our global meta-crisis in all its aspects—environmental, economic, political, and cultural—from a breathtakingly all-encompassing perspective. Even more remarkably, it frames our global and societal crises and opportunities as challenges to us, now, personally—in terms that penetrate our usual abstractions and avoidance. In fact, our own future and the future of our very life-support system are shown to be utterly dependent on the quality, intelligence, tenderness, and courage of our ways of being.

In this book, Patten demonstrates, in the most convincing terms, that inner and outer transformation are entirely interdependent. He shows us the difficult, necessary, creative, and ultimately rewarding work we must each engage in to meaningfully address our most “wicked” problems. He shows how we are all in denial about our collective situation, and invites us to understand and come to terms with the built-in mechanisms that spawned our multifaceted crisis in the first place.

This book also movingly inspires us to our own potential for heroic goodness, which is latent in every human heart. We are shown the connections between personal growth, relationships, conversations, and a new, inclusive vision of community, public service and cultural transformation.

“2017 set a global record for the most skyscrapers built in a single year and 2018 is predicted to eclipse it.”

Don’t forget to include industrial wind turbines in the skyscraper category! They’re rarely built in the context of their surroundings, looming over everything for miles and spoiling night skies with red lights. They now range up to 700 feet tall and have become the most visible form of urban sprawl ever seen on this planet. Offshore oil rigs are much sparser and don’t blight inland areas. Fracking isn’t good but its machines look much smaller at ground level.

Wind projects are hypocritically labeled as “clean and green” by quasi-environmentalists and firms who haul, grade, blast and clear-cut for these huge projects. The same outfits can be found helping “dirty” industries between wind gigs. It’s all the same mentality of build, build, build into nature.

Even if they truly reduced carbon (see data from Germany’s 28,000-turbine experiment) didn’t kill birds & bats, or produced anything near their stated output, wind turbines would be an environmental farce on an ethical level. Some counts show over 340,000 wind towers, planet-wide and the industry would like 10 times that number. Let’s save the planet from a plague of machine-laden horizons and focus on downsizing everything.

Even if it were possible, would a rapid transition to alternative energy sources save our asses? No.

The larger scale problem would remain, namely our access to too much energy. Any form of energy will be misused. Would a hydrogen powered chainsaw be used more wisely than its FF counterpart? Would a solar powered industrial farm significantly reduce habitat loss?

Human technological and industrial society, and the wonders and damage it is capable of, is intimately bound to the amount power it has access to.

The good news is, despite the common belief to the contrary, FFs are in decline. Advancements in extraction methods are no buttress to this event. They may prolong the inevitable for a short period of time by allowing us to temporarily pick fruit slightly higher up the tree but they all suffer the same limitation of thermodynamics 101 – increasing systemic complexity demands higher energy input for a given output. This is not always obvious when viewed from the perspective of an individual technology. The LED is a good example. Does their use require less energy than an comparable incandescent? Of course. But does a sufficiently technologically advanced society capable of mass producing LEDs demand more energy to survive than one that only produces incandescents? Absolutely. Does access to a lighting technology that uses 90% less energy per lumin reduce total energy consumed? Not if 10X as many light producing devices are deployed.

The bad news is FFs are in decline. Humanity is utterly dependent upon them. For everything. As FF quality ratchets downward (as measured by the EROEI ratio) the pace of extraction must increase exponentially just to maintain a linear increase in output. The principal difference between capitalism and it’s alternatives is that capitalism just gets you to the finish line a bit faster. Any system built on industrial production is unsustainable.

Industrial production and technology, along with all the advantages and disadvantages that they bring, will fall victim to declining net energy. A blessing and a curse.

Will humanity hit the energy wall before an unrecoverable situation manifests? That is the question.

“The bad news is FFs are in decline. Humanity is utterly dependent upon them….”

Of course a major folly is “100% renewable energy,” which implies that wind turbines can simply grow from the ground they stand on. Try to move a single industrial wind turbine blade one mile with battery or solar power. Then try to crane-lift it hundreds of feet with the same power, and grade roads and pour cement…..figure out the rest. Try to multiply that effort millions of times and you’re going nowhere. The luxury of still having fossil fuels is what fuels green fantasies.

Another requirement of the “100% renewables” delusion is to believe that we’re helping the planet by converting it to an industrial wasteland of spiky pinwheels and red lights. No, we’re just making a feeble, ugly attempt at pretending to get off fossil fuels. Too many environmentalists have sold out to Big Wind and lost whatever souls they had.

I see some hope in solar PV because its footprint can be nil if done right, but it still needs dense, abundant energy to exist.

“In other words, it’s a huge shit sandwich, and we’re all gonna have to take a
bite.” – Lt. Lockhart, “Full Metal Jacket”

Our acute case of omnicidal anthropocentric myopia is terminal. In what should be a surprise to no one, we’re a year further down the proverbial road to perdition. Good to read you again Mike. Be Well, Be Love.

Thanks, XRayMike, for responding constructively to the two racists (Dolph and RespectSilence) who ruined this very important conversation for me. When will they catch up with biological and genetic science and realize that there are no “racially inherent inabilities” because there is no scientific validity to the race concept itself? Probably when “white male supremacy” finally fails to fill the psychic need that they think it fills now. Surely there is no time for that in this moment when we are facing the spectre of near-term extinction. We are one species with many varied cultural expressions, not four or five subspecies, or “races.” I chose to share this post using the pingback version that you mentioned below, just so my friends could avoid the racist insults within these comments.

Mike, in that video the professor still seems to bring up “race” as in he mentions white supremacy and as if it’s the white peoples they are the problem. Yea he is right we have been involved in wrong doing but we had tribes in Europe that became swallowed up by civilisation. Many traditions lost. Civilisation is the social disease, it swept from what is now the Middle East and through bursts of growth and collapse grew to engulf/infect the whole world as it does now. We have all been affected by it. Even the North African civilisations took slaves from Europe. And what we now call the African continent most probably had civilisation before europe.
It’s not certain people doing things to other certain people but the social system that is the problem. Civilisation needs politics and politics breeds idealism. Civilisation is the problem and is inherently unstable but no one group can be blamed for it, even though western civilisation has been particularly invasive. However that’s because it found a means to gain plentiful energy and like a cancer growth gaining a blood supply grew massively and quickly.

I haven’t watched the whole set of videos, just the impression I got from the first was to blame certain people.

An old word with a modern relevant meaning: “In 460 BC Hippocrates identified … “consumption” … as the most widespread disease of his day and observed that it was almost always fatal. Someone who had [it] seemed literally to be consumed by the disease. That is why they used to speak of ‘consumption'” (Medicine Net).

Below is a link crtiicizing those talking about near term human extinction, that I find interesting. The speaker seemed to define NTHE as less than 10 years. He described those who say humanity has less than 10 years left as nut cases. But near the end he seems to take a position that NTHE in 3 or more decades due to climate change can not be ruled out. Yet if I recall correctly he says that it is premature to talk about this until we start seeing the evidence that it is happening.
To me human extinction in less than a century still qualifies as near term. Because like he says large numbers of people will be dying for many years if not decades before no humans are left. If this actually starts to happen then the political will to take drastic action to cool the planet will materialize.
Yet as someone, like archeologists, anthropologists, and sociologists, who work with dirt I find his assertion that humanity is capable of turning on a dime when its back is against the wall to be an assertion that is not very easy to support. He says that if the US military were to devote 2 years of its budget to fighting the real threat to the USA, and for that matter humanity, could do a lot to lessen the impacts of climate change.
Look this problem has been known about for a long time. The leadership of the US military has known about this problem for a long time. That leadership has not done jack shit up until now, what on earth could give someone the idea that they are ever going to do things differently than they have up to this point? The military leadership just points their finger at the President and the Congress to pass the buck. They sell us the dog and pony show about how they are subservient servants of a grateful nation that can only do what they are contracted to do. We are not supposed to know that every military in the world has a history of doing what it damn well pleases, or at least what the military leadership damn well pleases. AND that every military in the world has had examples of lower ranking soldiers stabbing higher ranking soldiers in the back WHEN THEY REALLY WANT TO. There is no evidence that the rank and file in the US military have any thoughts of sedition. Again they have had decades to figure out that the official story is BS and do something about it. That never did happen.
So finally here is the link:

I use percentages as outcomes for human events. I have viewed this man’s comments before. These problems can be solved with current technology. There has to be political will. I envisage a collapse of the current ‘industrial capitalistic system’. Yeah, it’s not a few years as some believe.(McPherson) But the reverse has to start happening. The survivability rate after the collapse depends on what happens near term. Mr Beckwith assumes some sort of engineering fix. Right now these are pipedreams. The carbon capture technology has not proven very feasible. Like where to store it. Sorta like what to do with nuclear waste. They still haven’t found a good way for long term storage for it. Or coal ash for that matter. The WIPP project in my state of NM has stalled because of a fire that released radiation back into the atmosphere. They spent $3 billion on those salt tunnels and can’t use them, so far. They tend to settle and disturb the containers. That wasn’t planned for when the project started. It’s best to accept we can’t live like we have and survive very long. I’m not a degreed scientist but I understand the immense problems humans are facing if this isn’t addressed. There are no magic wands, i.e. carbon capture or crap sprayed into the atmosphere. The oceans are dying, now. The ice is melting, now. Tropical forests are being destroyed, now. Weather events are happening, now. This is no longer a future event. It’s now if more folks would just look. My link to Medium may not work. Go to a Medium site and enter @jrallen1200 to access my writings for Earth Week, last week Peace The Ol’ Hippy

Darbikrash is working on a comprehensive essay of our dysfunctional society. It will be out whenever it’s done. We’re on the time schedule of tree-ring growth now. Too much noise to keep up on a daily basis.

A Guy with a doctorate in biology whose name that I forget is claiming on youtube that Humans will be extinct in 10 years. I am not that pessemitic. I do not see things happening that quickly. As the carring capacity of the earth declines there will probably be years in which the human population declines even faster which would allow for the leveling off of the population for a while.
Also at the moment though we may be near the carring capacity in which tens of millions or more people eat lots of beef and pork. The earth easily could feed this population if people had only a couple slices of roast beef just at Christmas time, and 2 pork hotdogs on the fourth of July for example.
Of course it is not realistic to expect that those in charge will make any attempt what so ever to use resources more effectively which will create a faster deciline in the planet’s carrying capacity than could be the case. None the less my guess is the process will take decades not years. (Unless the nuclear button gets pushed on the way down (out?))
It does seem that this biologist is correct though when he says that those in charge have chosen to murder us and committ suicide themselves rather than give up their previlages. It is stunning that they were able to get away with it so easily.

I believe the man is Guy McPherson of the University of Arizona. He’s definitely has the shortest time line. I tend to think more like a century, maybe two. Things will collapse and what’s left over will determine the future of mankind. When I was in high school(class of ’72) I didn’t think whats happening now would occur until around 2050 or so. Well it’s happening in my lifetime(born 1954) and things are more dire than most realize. I now just enjoy what time I have left and read philosophy. Oh, and my kitty cat. Peace, The Ol’ Hippy

“A Guy with a doctorate in biology whose name that I forget is claiming on youtube that Humans will be extinct in 10 years.”

It’s rarely effective when “doomers” make specific time predictions. It backfired on wise people like Paul Ehrlich, giving deniers ammo to claim there was never really a problem, regardless of the 24/7 destruction of nature. They dwell on narrow success parameters like food production and pretend everything’s fine because some dire date came and went.

“The earth easily could feed this population if people had only a couple slices of roast beef just at Christmas time, and 2 pork hotdogs on the fourth of July for example.”

Define “easily.” I’m not keen on vegan arguments that downplay overpopulation based on food alone when it’s got so many other components like energy use. It takes a lot of cropland to feed people and most crops are grown with oil. The population is far too large in any context. We need a big resource buffer vs. living on the edge all the time.

OK my counter counter point is, although things are not yet at a terrible state the sea ice in the Artic seems to be going pretty damn fast. The most relevent thing about the disappearence of the sea ice in my eyes is that no major institution capable of taking action on the matter, which would be a government or trans national institution has even made a proposal to do so. For a government to actually make a proposal to do so a political party that actually holds power, or has a realistic chance of gaining power, has to propose a specific plan of action to save the artic ice. As far as I know that has never been done. Once such a proposal has been made it will takes years of negotiations before a specific plan is accepted. Then additional years until such a plan is implemented.
That is why the artic trunda is going to melt.

There is a way out. But to make it out alive a lot of things that are not likely to happen all have to happen. Nuclear Fusion power has to be developed and deployed. A socialist revolution has to take place in the USA first, followed by China and Russia and India. The leaderships of these countries then have to come up with a way that the world can go in to a kind of economic hybernation in which no one starves to death. The world has to adopt a 2 child per family policy. I say 2 children as a maximum because I imagine that some women will chose to have only one child or none at all so that the world population will decline. But not so rapidly that a new set of problems is created. Scientists have to come up with a feasible way to triage the worlds environment.
The chances of any one of these things happening is low. How low does that make the chances of all of these things happening?

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Who really pulls the strings?:

The megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. The bought-and-paid politicians sitting in Washington are simply the marionettes of the corporations and financial elite who are dictating public policy and regulations.

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm).
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A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%."
- Albert Bates

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